"BlackBerry announced the surprising acquisition on Sept. 4, 2015. In securities filings, Prieto learned that four days later, BlackBerry made a bridge loan to Good for $20 million just so the latter could keep the lights on and pay the bills while it waited for the deal to close.

It was desperate times, for sure.

What’s more, Good had $89 million in debt at the time. So after receiving the $425, it had to pay the debt and then give another $267 million to preferred shareholders. That left $61 million for common shareholders (including any vested employees)."

WOW...I missed a few days and come back to find HALO at half what it was!! Holy $!?(...hope you guys (Morgan, I'm thinking particularly about you, my man) didn't take too big a bath on this. It's tempting as heck to get back in at these levels but I must do more research. I just bought some more PSDV and am long BlackBerry so available cash is limited. Any thoughts?

Rep. Hurd, a Republican from Texas, sits on the House Homeland Security Committee and is chairman of the IT Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Reform.

A security breach recently discovered at software developer Juniper Networks has U.S. officials worried that foreign hackers have been reading the encrypted communications of U.S. government agencies for the past three years. Yet compared with the uproar over the Office of Personnel Management breach, first disclosed last June, this recent breach has gone largely unnoticed.

On Dec. 17 the California-based Juniper Networks announced that an unauthorized backdoor had been placed in its ScreenOS software, and a breach was possible since 2013. This allowed an outside actor to monitor network traffic, potentially decrypt information, and even take control of firewalls. Days later the company provided its clients—which include various U.S. intelligence entities—with an “emergency security patch” to close the backdoor.

The federal government has yet to determine which agencies are using the affected software or if any agencies have used the patch to close the backdoor. Without a complete inventory of compromised systems, lawmakers are unable to determine what adversaries stole or could have stolen.

If government systems have yet to be fixed then adversaries could still be stealing sensitive information crucial to national security. The Department of Homeland Security is furiously working to determine the extent to which the federal government used ScreenOS. But Congress still doesn’t know the basic details of the breach.

Yet this vital information should not be difficult to obtain. After all, U.S. banks that use this software for encryption were forced to share the extent of their use to the Securities and Exchange Commission only hours after the compromise was disclosed. It is government agencies that are dragging their feet.

This is why I and my colleagues on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform recently wrote a letter to the heads of 24 federal agencies demanding an inventory of their systems running the affected software, and whether or not they have installed the patch. If they fail to respond they will be called before Congress to explain why they couldn’t produce this basic information—even though the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act requires government bodies to monitor and protect the data they possess.

Once we learn which agencies were using the faulty software, finish patching all the systems and conduct a damage assessment, we need to examine why this older version of ScreenOS, last updated in 2011, was being used in the first place. This product is considered a legacy system that many users have replaced with better technology, yet the U.S. government hadn’t bothered to update to a newer, more-secure system.

Sadly, this isn’t surprising. Last year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the federal government spent over $80 billion on IT procurement and 80% of those funds were for legacy systems—outdated technology or software similar to ScreenOS. This practice of not keeping up with the times renders our nation’s IT infrastructure less efficient and exponentially more vulnerable.

Finally, this incident shows that backdoors to bypass encryption—even those requested by law enforcement or mandated by lawmakers—are extremely dangerous. There is no way to create a backdoor that is not vulnerable to this kind of breach. Encryption is essential to our national security and economy; we should be focused on strengthening it not weakening it.

Fourth-quarter smartphone shipments were down as the company aimed to manage inventory, while its tablet shipments rose amid the seasonal bump in demand.

Meanwhile, the company said increased competition mixed with slumping demand will limit growth in its mobile devices unit for 2016.

“As for the outlook for 2016, Samsung expects single-digit percentage growth in both the smartphone and tablet categories amid softening demand and intensifying competition,” Samsung said in a statement. “Despite this challenging environment, the company will focus on increasing smartphone shipments and maintaining a double-digit margin through releases of competitive devices and an optimized product portfolio.”

Apple Inc., one of the world’s most-recognized technology companies, will open an office in Kanata, the Citizen has learned.

According to several sources in the Ottawa real estate community, the Cupertino, California, tech giant has leased a 22,000-square-foot space on the third floor of 411 Legget Drive after shopping for space in the capital area since at least October.

Apple has repeated refused comment on its Ottawa expansion, and on Wednesday again would not discuss whether its office — relatively modest at about 2.5 times the size of an average Apple retail outlet — is the beginning of any planned larger presence in the capital.

The office is across the street from QNX Software Systems, a wholly owned division of BlackBerry Ltd. and a leading developer of the automotive software that is one of the tech industry’s hottest fields.

Ottawa Apple executive Sbastian Marineau-Mes is a former key QNX executive who left that company after a lengthy legal battle. Marineau-Mes, whose responsibilities included QNX’s auto software platforms and the BlackBerry 10 operating system, was originally hired by Apple in September 2013, but his departure was delayed after BlackBerry, citing non-compete clauses in his contract, fought the hiring in court.

According to profiles on the online network LinkedIn, several members of Marineau-Mes’s team have since left QNX for Apple. Among them are Payam Moradshahi, now listed as an iOS embedded bring-up engineer at Apple after spending almost six years at QNX, and Wadih Shaib, now a software engineer at Apple who spent close to seven years at QNX/BlackBerry.

Property records show that Marineau-Mes continues to own a home in the Manotick area.

Marineau-Mes did not return requests by the Citizen seeking comment on the new offices or Apple’s intentions in the capital.

In a statement, QNX described reports of Apple’s arrival in Ottawa, the position now held by Marineau-Mes and the loss of employees to the California company “rumours” and “speculation.”

“As a matter of policy, we don’t comment on rumours or speculation. BlackBerry’s QNX subsidiary has a global reputation for developing leading-edge technologies and continues to attract top talent,” said Paul Leroux, a spokesman for QNX. “Our leadership in the automotive market continues to grow, with software deployed in over 60 million vehicles. Leveraging our QNX platform, we continue to introduce new products.”

As its parent company continues to sputter, QNX has proven itself the bright spot within the organization as it continues to gain market share among automotive manufacturers. Over the past 33 years QNX has pioneered software to allow cars to do everything from connecting to cellphones and playing music to autonomous driving. QNX software is installed in more than 50 per cent of all cars sold around the world.

Apple is on a quest to build its own automobile. Its Project Titan has reportedly hired staff from Tesla Motors, Texas Instruments, Volkswagen, Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler.

Apple’s research and development budget jumped to $8.07 billion U.S. in 2015, a 34-per-cent increase over 2014.

Sorry for the multiple OT's this evening, but I just finished reading a summary of analysts' reviews after the latest AAPL Q...These analysts are trying save their jobs, not honesty analysing the reality that nothing grows forever...no comment on the Apple Watch flop, nor that there continues to be a complete lack of real imagination in the iPhone which hasn't really changed (okay, it's bigger than the bigger) since its introduction. When a company is forced by the market to 'innovate' (ie. create something that makes us even more dollars), they forget to make things that make cents (sense)...$170 to $200??? And real people put their life savings into AAPL based on this dribble... At least there were a couple realistic ones who are in the low $100's target...I predict AAPL will be a text book example of how the all too mighty have fallen...amazing how history repeats itself, time and time again. Best All...

no comment on the Apple Watch flop, nor that there continues to be a complete lack of real imagination in the iPhone which hasn't really changed (okay, it's bigger than the bigger) since its introduction.

Apple made more revenue on the Apple Watch than most companies (including Blackberry) are worth. Unless you are under the impression that they sold $3 billion worth of Apple TVs. And if you think the iPhone hasn't changed at all since its original introduction in 2007, well, that's some pretty impressive ignorance.

OT: Fair enough...the iphone is 'different' than it was (and yes, I've owned them over the years), but the look and feel and OS is an evolution at best, not innovation. I've walked by the local apple store likely 10 times in the past couple months...while there have been hordes around the iphone, iPad, MacBook tables, there's been nary a soul around the watch tables...not one...speaks for itself. Best all...now back to BBRY!

Apple made more revenue on the Apple Watch than most companies (including Blackberry) are worth. Unless you are under the impression that they sold $3 billion worth of Apple TVs. And if you think the iPhone hasn't changed at all since its original introduction in 2007, well, that's some pretty impressive ignorance.

I guess the iPhone has changed. It became sleek and thin. Not much more than that.

I've walked by the local apple store likely 10 times in the past couple months...while there have been hordes around the iphone, iPad, MacBook tables, there's been nary a soul around the watch tables...not one...speaks for itself.

Anecdote ≠ data. The huge jump in revenue in the "Other Products" category speaks for itself.